My brain thinks differently than the rest of the world. These are those thoughts.

Category Archives: Baseball

If you’ve ever attended a baseball game you will understand what I’m about to say, if not, I’m sorry. Perhaps now you can use the time you were going to spend reading this to go do something more fun like play ping-pong. Unless you like to learn in which case, feel free to stay here and keep reading.

In baseball it is perfectly acceptable to shout things at the players. There are enough drunk people around that you can pretty much do whatever without anyone even thinking twice about it. You can taunt players about their inability to play baseball. You can say mean things about their moms, you can even tell them they have a large hindquarters. This is one of the few social settings in which you can feel free to shout whatever you want without any repercussions to your actions*. Shoot, you can even yell things at the umpires if you want. In fact I would highly recommend it if you find yourself growing bored.

Recently I attended a baseball game. This wasn’t just any baseball game, this was a Nashville Sounds Triple-A baseball game. Meaning, that there are approximately 27 people in the stand on any given night. And in this particular game there was very little action happening. And that’s when it happened. I was given the all important task of searching far and wide on the internet for things to yell at baseball games. And let me tell you, the options are scarce. When you take out all the “Jeter SUUUCKS!!!!” and “STEEEEEEEERRROOOOOIDDS!!”, you are left with very few choices. While shouting things like “I AM SATISFIED WITH YOUR PERFORMANCE THUS FAR!” and “YOU COULDN’T HIT A COW WITH A SHOVEL!!!” are enjoyable, those two phrases will not last you a whole 9 innings. And that’s why I’m here, people of the world wide web. I’m here to offer suggestions of what would be quality things to yell at a baseball game. I’ve searched far and wide for the best of the best. It’s my little gift to you. You’re welcome.

Things To Yell At Players:

I’ve seen better swings on a porch

Hey! Too bad you aren’t as good at baseball as you are at being ugly!

I find you to be a subpar athlete!

My grandma could throw better than that!

I find your pitching to be lackluster, perhaps you are ill!

You should go back to Triple-A, try a little harder, gain some maturity, and come back to the majors in a year or two!

Your fielding is surprisingly poor compared to your teammate, yet still incredibly above-average as you are a professional baseball player and I am not!

It’s okay. You’re mom still loves you!

You couldn’t hit water if you fell out of a boat!

I wish my golf score was as good as your batting average!

The ball is that thing the catcher has!

Hey they killed a cow to make that glove, at least you could try to use it!

Is it in your contract to throw like a girl?

Things To Yell At Umpires:

Hey blue, if you had another eye, you’d be a cyclops! (you know, implying that he’s terrible at making calls thus assuming he has no eyeballs and the addition of a new eyeball would equal a grand total of one eyeball…..maybe in retrospect don’t use this one)

Turn around blue. You’re missing a good game.

That was a strike! You’re the worst umpire ever!

I thought only horses slept standing up!

If you’re just going to watch the game, buy a ticket!

I was confused the first time I saw a game too!

Hey ump, diarrhea has more consistency than your strike zone !

WRONG!

You couldn’t call a cab!

The circus is in town and the clowns are wearing blue!

Things To Yell Solely Out of Boredom:

BOOORING!!

Gooo baseball!!

Loud noises!!

(You could pretty much yell anything for this category. Use your imagination.)

Enjoy, my fellow baseball fans. This was all for you. If you find yourself at a sad, depressing baseball game, feel free to peruse this list and find something to spice your day up. And if nothing else, maybe it will get you kicked out of the game and then you’ll have a story to tell the grandkids about. What’s better than that?

*I actually don’t think that’s true. If you shout cusses you’ll probably get sent to baseball jail. I’m pretty sure it’s a place. I watch Seinfeld. Everywhere they go there’s a jail. Shopping malls, parking garages, they all have jails. So why wouldn’t a baseball stadium have a jail?

I was 7, he was not. He was also probably married and had children at that point as well, but that didn’t stop me. Because first of all, I was…7, 7 year olds do not have a concept of what is socially acceptable.

At this time in my life Mike Sweeney was the catcher for the Kansas City Royals. Also, at this time in my life, the Kansas City Royals were terrible. You could pretty much get tickets to a game as long as you promised to not boo the home team. (or for like 5 bucks, either way) Because of this, a large portion of my summer was spent at Royals games.

In an effort to ‘woo’ their fans the Royals had autograph days where for an hour before the game certain players would sign autographs for adorable little children and uncomfortably obsessed adults. And on one particular game day, the player of choice was none other than that hunky catcher, Mike Sweeney.

My little 7-year-old heart could barely take it. Standing in line behind the 12 other people who chose to attend the game that evening, waiting in anxious anticipation for the man himself to show up. And finally, after what seemed like an eternity later, there he was. In his uniform and everything ready to sign a stack of team printed cards.

Finally, finally it was my turn. Hands shaking, I made my way up to the table. I said nothing. I probably just looked at him with a goofy grin. I was a shy 7-year-old. (Let’s get real, that’s how I would react if the same scenario was happening right now, 16 year later) Then the unthinkable happened. He asked me my name. I didn’t know how to react, but then my brain finally stepped into play and I quietly mumbled, “…Amanda…” Then he handed it to me with brilliant pearly whites shining. He handed me my newest prized possession. I took it in my still shaking hand. On this card THE Mike Sweeney had written:

“To: Amanda
Jer. 29:11
♡ Mike Sweeney”

I nearly passed out. As a 7-year-old I was pretty convinced that this “♡” meant Mike Sweeney was my new boyfriend. But you know what guys, I don’t think it did mean that. I’m pretty sure it just meant he was being nice to the shy, pathetic 2nd grader who didn’t know how to speak, but whatever.

This baseball card has been a priceless piece of my life since that day. And now, now it has gone AWOL. Somewhere between moving from Kansas to Tennessee, Mike Sweeney vanished. I don’t want to overreact, but I’m 110% sure that someone stole it to make my life sad and meaningless. Without that card how will I ever prove that Mike Sweeney once, for 5 seconds of his life, knew my name? I need it back and I need it back bad.

Without this card, my childhood is lost. So what I need is for whoever wanted to ruin my life, to return it to me ASAP. I won’t even be mad at you. But without Mike Sweeney, my childhood never happened. Do you want that on your conscience? No, you do not. Plus I’m going to just keep whining about it if I never find this card. No one wants to deal with my whining for the rest of their lives. I’m a really annoying whiner and that’s probably why I don’t have a husband, but I digress.

So in conclusion, if you find a Mike Sweeney card addressed to Amanda and you are not Amanda, it’s mine and I want, no I NEED, it back.

Also if you happen to be Mike Sweeney, could you maybe just send me a new one so this whole messy thing can be behind me? Thanks!

Thursday, which is actually today, a young (and by young, I mean he’s 36) Tampa Bay Rays* player found himself in a bit (and by bit I mean A LOT) of trouble.

It seems Joel Peralta, one of their relief pitchers, thought he needed a little bit of help in the pitching department. And seeing as how he used to play for the Kansas City Royals, a team known for horrible pitchers, he is probably not incorrect, but I have digressed.

Our good friend Joel here decided to place a wee bit of pine tar within his baseball glove and according to rule 8.02** in the MLB rule book, “the pitcher shall not apply a foreign substance of any kind to the ball”. When he put the ball in the glove itself, voila, pine tar ball, otherwise known as foreign substance ball. You can’t hit a pine tar ball, this is a fact*** and Joel Peralta knew this.

You are not allowed to doctor the ball. Joel was a class A offender of this rule. Or so the MLB would want us to think.

However, Joely, as I refer to him, does not see this incident in the same light as the MLB. He has decided to appeal this suspension, on the grounds that he did not do it, I guess. Although I sort of feel like he was caught pine-tar handed (see what I did there?) Or perhaps he’s going to attempt to justify why the pine tar was inside of his glove.

And that is where I come in. I got your back Joely! I can justify absolutely any situation. So let’s get started.

#1. My glove smelled like sweaty hands. Mostly because my sweaty hand is always in it. I thought perhaps the pine tar would give it a delightful ‘woody’ scent. I was incorrect.

#2. I suffer from extra sweaty palms. My hands sweat A LOT. And since they’re really, really sweaty I have a hard time holding onto the baseball to pitch a quality 4-finger fastball. I thought the pine tar would help my grip. Is that against the rules? My bad guys.

#3. Matsui did it! That guy’s been after me all season. He wanted me to get suspended. I’ve said it time and time again, you cannot trust a guy name Hideki. And no one believed me, but looks what he’s done now. He’s ruined me.

#4. That’s not pine tar guys. That’s my saliva. I’m dipping. I love chewing tobacco. I’ve been hooked ever since I saw The Sandlot. Those guys and their dipping then riding on carnival rides. That movie is hilar!

#6. I suck at pitching. I have a 3.72 era. I suck so bad that the Royal didn’t want me. And they love terrible pitchers. I needed all the help I could get okay? Just let me have this one.

There ya go Joely! Take any of the above and I guarantee your appeal will be successful. There is no way you will still be suspended after this.

*Don’t worry men of the Tampa Bay baseball team, I know ‘Rays’ is a pretty stupid sounding mascot, therefore you will always be the Devil Rays to me. You’re welcome.
**This is a real rule. I googled it. Google does not lie.
***I have absolutely no evidence that this is a fact.
****Would you believe that we’re not actually friends at all? I’ve never even met the guy.

It’s a delightful May evening in Washington DC. It’s warm but there’s just enough of a cool breeze to keep a person from getting heat stroke. A perfect night to take in a baseball game at Nationals Park.

You’re sitting in the upper deck enjoying a ballpark frank and maybe a cola of sorts. You’ve just sat back down after the a rousing chorus of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” signaling the classic 7th inning stretch. Next thing you know a bloodied 19-year-old ventures out onto the field.

You’re shocked, appalled and maybe even vomiting a little bit of your ballpark frank back up, when you realize, “Hey wait! That’s not just any bloody faced 19-year-old! That’s our wunderkind of an outfielder, Bryce Harper! What the heck happened to him?”

Well, it seems this young, talented, first-round draft pick was getting frustrated with his inability to connect his bat with a ball. So he did the most logical thing he could think of.

He went down into the dugout tunnel and slammed his bat into the wall.

Apparently, young Bryce does this often. Normally, he slams that bat hard into concrete and goes back onto the field with a little less anger, but this time, that bat fought back. That bat was tired of being slammed into things and decided to get its revenge.

It smacked Bryce Harper right in the face. That bat just bounced right off the wall. Into his face. Either he didn’t realize that the bat had caused him some serious face marring or he just didn’t care but he went back onto that field with blood dripping down his face, as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.

I imagine the conversation between Harper and Rick Ankiel went something like this:

“Uh. Hey Harpy*….”
“Ya Anks*?”
“I don’t want this to be awkward, but you’ve got some blood leaking out of your eyebrow.”
“Oh, ya Anks. That’s probably because I just went down into the tunnel back there and slammed my bat into the wall, then it bounced back into my face. So ya…that’s probably why I’m bleeding.”
“That was pretty stupid Harpy.”
“Get off my back old man! I’m a 19-year-old rookie. I do stupid things!”
“Yes you do Harpy, yes you do.”

So then young Harpy recieved 10 stitches in his eyebrow. And as if hitting himself in the face with a baseball bat wasn’t enough he had to wear this sign of shame for the rest of the game and was also forced to sit out of the lineup for the next two.

The moral of the story is: if you are upset about going 0-5 in your at-bats don’t hit your wooden bat into a cement wall. It will hit you back.

Quite frankly, I’m surprised this hasn’t happened to him sooner. Logical sense tells me that if I slam something hard into something slightly harder it will bounce back.

But you know, Harper has obviously skipped out on the college experience and that’s why he’s a 19-year-old MLB player and I’m not. We’ll chalk this one up to youthful stupidity.

In the meantime maybe the Nationals should buy the guy some Sock ‘Em Boppers.

More fun than a pillow fight…or having your own baseball bat hit you directly in the face.

*I made up these nicknames, but I will be incredible upset to find out they aren’t real.

[Side note. The guy does NOT look 19. I’m seeing at least 25, they should probably check his birth certificate. But you know, whatev.]